A holiday gift for North Beach?

Just when you thought plans were nailed down for the $1.6 billion Central Subway from Caltrain to Chinatown (and sorta onward to North Beach) comes a new and somewhat unexpected development.

Municipal Transportation Agency officials, lambasted by a group of North Beach merchants and residents, are reconsidering plans to dig all the way from the Chinatown station at Stockton and Washington streets to Columbus Avenue in North Beach to remove the tunnel boring machines. The idea is that the tunnel extension could eventually become part of a subway to Fisherman’s Wharf with a station in North Beach.

Although the plans were approved years ago, with little reaction from North Beach denizens, opposition erupted this summer when the MTA posted notices announcing the start of utility relocation to prepare for construction of an extraction shaft. The work has already led to some single-lane closures on busy Columbus Avenue between Union and Filbert streets and would be followed by another 10 months or so of two-lane closures to dig the shaft and pull out the two massive mechanical tunnel-diggers.

After opposition from the Telegraph Hill Dwellers and North Beach Neighbors, not to mention Supervisor David Chiu, the MTA came up with four alternatives: Leaving the tunnel boring machines underground just north of Washington Street, leaving the tunnel boring machines underground beneath Columbus Avenue in the Washington Square area, removing the machines at the long-abandoned Pagoda Theater at Powell Street and Columbus in North Beach, or abandoning the machines underground beneath Columbus north of Taylor Street, near where North Beach transitions into Fisherman’s Wharf.

At a recent community meeting, abandoning the machines in Chinatown and removing them at the Pagoda Theater were the most popular suggestions.

Ending in Chinatown could save $23 million, shorten construction by three months and, of course, quiet North Beach outrage. But it could also make it more difficult and costly to ever extend the subway to the wharf, said agency spokesman Paul Rose.

The Pagoda option, the MTA estimates, would require further environmental studies, negotiations with the property owner and cost up to $8 million more.

The MTA board is tentatively scheduled to make a decision at its Dec. 4 meeting.